Surrogate generation and evaluation of gasolines

Abstract

Fuel surrogates are substitute mixtures that are developed to reproduce real fuels’ physical and chemical properties. These mixtures are created with a small number of components, considering their application in various types of simulations and for bench tests. In the present paper, new gasoline surrogates are proposed by extending and applying an algorithm which was previously developed and successfully used to create diesel surrogates. The five target properties chosen for surrogate optimization include the true boiling point curve (TBP), the research octane number (RON), the liquid density, the carbon-to-hydrogen (C/H) ratio and the oxygenate content. The algorithm is applied to three target fuels, comprising two reference fuels from the FACE working group and one typical oxygenated gasoline that is commercially available in Europe. The proposed surrogates consist of six chemical components which are also represented in reaction kinetics for fuel combustion. An experimental comparison of the boiling point curves, densities and RONs among the surrogates and their respective target fuels provided evidence that the proposed surrogates excellently reproduce the real fuels’ properties.